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In 2002 it lost its metropolitan function (and thus the archbishop no longer wears the pallium), its province having ceased to exist (the province had already been substantially modified from the late Roman province of Aquitania Prima with which it had initially corresponded - Albi had been erected as an archbishopric in the medieval context of heresiological conflict; Orléans, Chartres, and Blois - historically dependent on Sens - had been attached to Paris, from which they passed to Bourges in the 1960s). The Archdiocese (also the three above- mentioned sees) is now suffragan to the Archdiocese of Tours; other dioceses until recently dependent on Bourges are now suffragans of the Clermont-Ferrand Archdiocese. Historical ecclesiastical geography has here thus changed to correspond with France's new regions, much as diocesan and provincial boundaries from Napoleon's Concordat of 1801 onwards changed mainly in accordance with those of the Revolution's départements.
History
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The diocese was founded in the 3rd century. Its first bishop was St. Ursinus of Bourges. In the Middle Ages there was a dispute between the bishop of Bourges and the bishop of Bordeaux about the primacy of Aquitaine. Bourges was the place of many synods. The synods 1225 and 1226 are the most important and dealt with the Albigenses.
^Eubel, I, p. 139. Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès; Ulysse Chevalier; Louis Fillet (1901). Gallia christiana novissima: Arles (in French and Latin). Montbéliard: Soc. anonyme d'imprimerie montbéliardasie. p. 741.
^Entry 394 in Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, vol. 4, p. 94. Paris: Plon, 1886 (at Google Books). Michel Phélypeaux de La Vrillière (1642–1694), VIAF.